‘SEINFELD’ CO-STARS AGREE TO DVD DEAL
A potentially bitter dispute over royalties between Jerry Seinfeld and his three co-stars has been settled – allowing the release of a DVD collection of “Seinfeld” with newly filmed interviews and other material.
Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza, told the Toronto Globe and Mail over the weekend that a deal “has very recently been worked out.”
Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who played Elaine) and Michael Richards (who played Kramer) had refused to provide extra material for the DVD collection because Seinfeld and Castle Rock Television, which produced the series for NBC, refused to pay them or offer a share in the royalties.
The “Seinfeld” producers have now agreed that the three co-stars can earn royalties from the DVD collection.
“We are currently in negotiations so that we are participants in the DVD, and that’s a happy arrangement because we didn’t really want to create this sort of negative impression of our experience,” said Alexander, who’s been starring in the Los Angeles stage production of “The Producers.”
The three co-stars have no share in the royalties, which reportedly have netted Seinfeld more than a billion dollars.
“I’m not ashamed to talk numbers,” Alexander said. “I would say in the years that we’ve been in syndication, Julia, Michael and I have probably individually seen about a quarter of a million dollars out of residuals, whereas our brethren have seen hundreds of millions of dollars.
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